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Blues & Roots is not only a cornerstone in Charles Mingus' body of work but also a testament to the enduring power of the blues as a foundation for jazz

Mingus managed to both honor tradition and push the boundaries of jazz, all while making a deeply personal and politically charged musical statement. The album remains one of the most vital and influential recordings in the history of jazz music. Released in 1960 this album stands out in Mingus' discography as a raw, vibrant homage to the roots of blues and gospel traditions in jazz. Mingus sought to return to his musical roots, drawing from blues and gospel traditions he grew up with, particularly from the African American church music of his youth. The album is a powerful statement of how deeply the blues tradition influenced modern jazz. It combines the unfiltered emotional intensity of the blues with Mingus' forward-thinking and often unconventional compositional techniques. The album's tracks are imbued with a strong sense of the blues, which is especially apparent in songs like "Wednesday Night Prayer Meeting" and "Moanin'." The album carries a loose, jamsession feel, reflecting the church and street-based roots of blues music. The use of call- and- response patterns in several tracks also hints at gospel traditions. Blues & Roots is often cited as a critical album in the development of jazz as a genre that embraced both its past and future. Mingus' ability to integrate traditional musical forms (such as blues and gospel) with more modern, experimental elements opened up new possibilities for jazz. His compositional style, which juxtaposed tightly arranged sections with freewheeling solos, influenced generations of musicians, from avant-garde jazz artists to rock musicians and composers in other genres

The Blues and the Abstract Truth is not just a landmark album in Oliver Nelson's career but in the history of jazz itself

The album features an incredible ensemble of top-tier jazz musicians, often referred to as a "supergroup": Oliver Nelson (alto saxophone, tenor saxophone), Freddie Hubbard (trumpet), Eric Dolphy (alto saxophone, flute), George Barrow (baritone saxophone), Bill Evans (piano), Paul Chambers (bass), Roy Haynes (drums). The early 1960s were marked by a shift from the hard bop of the 1950s to more experimental forms, including modal jazz, free jazz, and the incorporation of avant-garde elements. Musicians like John Coltrane, Ornette Coleman, and Charles Mingus were all pushing the boundaries of jazz, and Oliver Nelson's work fits within this broader movement: in this album there's a perfect combination of modern compositional techniques, virtuosic performances, and emotional depth make it an essential listening experience for any jazz fan. It captures the moment when jazz was evolving into new, exciting directions while staying connected to its roots in the blues. The Blues and the Abstract Truth is considered one of the essential albums in modern jazz where Oliver Nelson's compositional style blends hard bop, modal jazz, and blues influences with sophisticated harmonic structures and striking arrangements. The album is noted for ts rich orchestration despite having a relatively small ensemble with use of textures and colours, particularly in tracks like "Stolen Moments," created a new standard in azz arranging.

The Invisible Road: Original Recordings, 1985–1990 compiles an unheard, previously unreleased body of recordings by Sussan Deyhim and Richard Horowitz, dissidents from diametric backgrounds who met during the heady days of Downtown New York in the 1980s. This collection reveals the creative and life partners’ radical shared vision of avant-garde pop in all of its boundary pushing freedom, combining Deyhim’s singular approach to vocalization, Horowitz’s invention of new musical languages, and touchstones of traditional music from around the world, creating a new music that ultimately retains a voice entirely its own. Despite their difference in backgrounds and respective journeys, at the time of their meeting in the early 1980s in New York City, Sussan Deyhim and Richard Horowitz were both products of the search for freedom and understanding (and resultant awakenings) that swept the globe and helped culturally define the late 1960s and 70s. Deyhim, born and raised in Tehran, spent her teens dancing with Iran’s Pars National Ballet company, performing weekly on Iranian national television, and travelling her home country studying with master folk musicians and dancers, before relocating to Belgium and joining Maurice Béjart’s prestigious Béjart Ballet of the 20th Century. Horowitz, born and raised in Buffalo, New York, had spent much of the decade before abroad, first departing for Paris under the shadows of the Vietnam War, where he studied piano, Eastern philosophy, and became entrenched the city’s free jazz scene, playing with the likes of Steve Lacy, Anthony Braxton, and Alan Silva, before embarking south to Morocco where his friendship with Paul Bowles helped cultivate a deep passion for the country’s musical traditions and a shift in his musical practice.



The pair met by chance sometime in 1981 at Noise New York, a small studio on West 34th Street founded by the musician and recording engineer, Frank Eaton, as a utopian creative laboratory that beckoned artists and bands like Arthur Russell, Christian Marclay, Liquid Liquid and Butthole Surfers into its orbit. Both artists had recently relocated to the city, Horowitz having recently released his debut album, Oblique Sequences (Solo Nai Improvisations), on the legendary Paris based imprint Shandar, and fallen in with members of New York avant-garde like La Monte Young, Jon Hassell, David Byrne, and Brian Eno, and Deyhim having begun to more actively incorporate singing into her practice, notably recording a vocal score for choreography she was doing at La MaMa Experimental Theatre.



Initially bonding over a cassette tape of field recordings made by Paul Bowles that had been given to mutual friend and writer Brian Cullman (seeking answers for Ornette Coleman’s question “what is the sound of sound”), their earliest collaboration was documented on Horowitz’s 1981 album, Eros In Arabia, with Deyhim contributing vocals to the track “Queen Of Saba.” Over the coming years, their deep connection would routinely gravitate them into the studio, culminating in the body of recordings that would appear on their 1986 album for Crammed Discs, Desert Equations: Azax Attra. Unknown to nearly all but the artists, laying in wait over the decades on numerous multi-track and stereo reels, DAT tapes, and reference cassettes, were a vast array of recordings made by Deyhim and Horowitz bookending Desert Equations. The 13 pieces represented on The Invisible Road: Original Recordings, 1985–1990 were recorded largely between Noise New York and Daylight Studio in Brussels, during a period that Deyhim describes the partnership between herself and Horowitz’s as seeking a music “free of any specific cultural reference, with a personal musical signature,” blossoming into a body of sonority that embraced the energy of contemporary boundary pushing pop and the avant garde, filtered through their mutual love and study of various musical traditions from across the globe and deep engagement with the ideas and tactics of experimental music.



Undeniably rooted in Horowitz’s study of the North Africa ney and the music of the Berber and Gnawa cultures during his time in Morocco, Deyhim’s deep engagement with the folk traditions of Iran, and the couple’s immersion in the interconnected Downtown underground music scenes, each piece on The Invisible Road offers its own vision creative and cultural hybridity. Deyhim sings in both English and Farsi, as well as a composite tongue that she developed by drawing upon numerous indigenous vocal techniques from around the world, intuitively responding to Horowitz’s simultaneous sound syntax forming and combining a wide range synthetic and acoustic instrumentation, and experimental tape techniques, within a visionary series of free-standing expressions.

After Denzel’s debut EP ‘Techniques 4 Life’ last year, the quest for finding those approaches continues. The Helsinki night owl draws from a range of influences here on his sophmore EP ‘Glorified Intake’, taking things into a murkier territory than his previous, made during a transitional period of his life between two cities, H & B.

The first track HKI 13 is an ode to roots. The track is held together by a swerving astral arpeggio combined with chants from a village dance off and stabs that liken to that one Balearic house anthem… The Sun is well on its way below.

Nightrun reduces things to a darker core, howling into the night, embodying a state rather than telling a story. Time goes by, how is it already tomorrow? An after hours tune with a bassline for a hook. Doesn’t get much sleazier than that. Getting down, getting low.
On the flipside, we’ve made it to the beginning of the end, phased out the doubts and gathered up the strength to go on — things are looking brighter. A voice inside your head — trust only yourself.

Finally on the last stretch, light has subsided and darkness has landed once again. We’ve thrown out any notion of what, where and who. Those things don’t matter anymore: we’ve perfected “the state”. It’s go time.

"In 1971, Dr Tree emerged as a highly innovative jazz-fusion ensemble from Auckland, formed by two of New Zealand's most seasoned session musicians, Frank Gibson Jr. and Murray McNabb - the pair had jammed together since grammar school. Drawing sizable crowds while working the Auckland circuit, the band caught the attention of EMI scout, Alan Galbraith, who wasted no time signing them up for an album. Galbraith, a trained musician and adventurous producer, brought in additional support from Julian Lee, an internationally acclaimed arranger and producer (who had recently returned to New Zealand after a decade Stateside on Frank Sinatra's insistence).

The album's an all-instrumental excursion into territory mapped out by the likes of Return To Forever, Weather Report and Tony Williams Lifetime - all acolytes of Miles Davis's late- 60s explorations. The session combines experimental studio techniques with blazing artistry, juxtapositioning trippy electronic textures and improvised jazz, creating a hypnotic kaleidoscope of sound."

Double LP featuring previously unreleased recordings and outtakes.
Restored and remastered at�Abbey Road Studios by Grammy award-winning engineer Sean Mage.
Heavyweight tip-on gatefold sleeve featuring archival band photography.
Restored and newly remastered at Abbey Road Studios.
Limited edition of 600 copies (300 in New Zealand, remaining 300 worldwide).

For the first time two single records of Baksey Cham Krong - the first Cambodian guitar band - are officially being reissued in an identical version. Between surf music and ballad, these two records released in 1963 and 1964 are an invitation to rediscover the effervescent Khmer musical scene of the 1960s.

The early 1960s are often described as the “golden age” of Cambodia, with a flourishing economy and a strong cultural development. As the country had just won its independence, the King Norodom Sihanouk - who had been a singer himself (see below) - encouraged dynamism and creativity in all aspects of cultural life.

In 1959, in the midst of this artistic turmoil, Mol Kamach and his brothers created a band: the Baksey Cham Krong (also spelled Bakseis Cham Krung) named after a temple of the Angkor site. The teenagers were influenced by the latest hits they had listened on the radio. For the music, Kagnol got his inspiration from the rock n’ roll of the Ventures and the Shadows while Kamach took over the vocal techniques of crooners such as Paul Anka. The lyrics were either in French (as for the song Ne penser qu’à toi) or in Khmer. The song Pleine Lune became a hit and revealed Kagnol’s musical genius at playing guitar and Kamach’s delicate voice. From their beginnings on the capital’s high school stages to their first broadcasts on national radio, the success of the Baksey Cham Krong was very quick. At the end of the decade the band already split, the brothers getting back to activities that conformed more with their parents’ expectations.

A few years later, in April 1975, the arrival of the Khmer Rouge in Phnom Penh put an end to this musical development and started the darkest era of Cambodia’s contemporary history. A quarter of the population was killed in the Khmer Rouge genocide and the majority of artists and intellectuals were exterminated in a sordid will to wipe out any form of culture in the country. Films and music were banned, movie tapes and vinyls were destroyed. Mol Kamach and Mol Kagnol luckily managed to flee the country: one now lives in France, the other in the USA. Both still continue to make music nowadays.

Bearing witness to the past history, the reissue of these two single records of Baksey Cham Krong brings back to us the Cambodian musical scene of the 1960s.

Finding herself in different emotional and physical spaces over the past years, The Hague-based Seina creates four ambiguous tracks for Juni, her debut EP out on Präsens Editionen. The material, which comfortably sits between ambient, glitch and noise, feels like a long-overdue update of Mille Plateaux and Raster-Noton's golden days. The result, however, is much richer in texture and much more sensual than these dinosaurs of electronic music.
On Juni, Seina, who has a background in electroacoustic music and live performance, layers a range of source material created with different means and techniques—from Supercollider-generated elements, to field recordings gathered in Finland, France and The Netherlands, to analog electronic instruments, digital feedback and manipulated human voices.
The EP, which is partly composed and partly improvised, does not point in one particular direction but in many at the same time, making it an immersive experience and, at the same, a bold debut.

* Edition of 100 copies
* Special artwork by Paris-based visual artist Caroline Ventura in custom snapbox
* Designed by Swiss graphic designers Denise Häberli & Alina Scharnhorst of INTR

On this new LP Harry Bertoia shows why he may have been the first industrial musician. Bertoia often referred to his sound sculptures as a "collaboration with industry" and on this LP Bertoia is intentionally creating heavy, rhythmic music he described as "mechanized," "mechanical" and "factory like."

Recorded in 1971, percussion and repetition emulate the pounding rhythms of machinery on this unique pair of conceptual Bertoia compositions. Bertoia utilizes innovative performance techniques to create new sounds unheard in his ouevre. Even in the busy factory of Bertoia's mind, distant stillness rises up as Bertoia exhibits the massive amount of control he possesses over his many looming sculptures.

"Mechanization" is just one of the many sonic directions Bertoia took while composing and recording between the late 1950's and his death in 1978. He documented all of his ideas and directions in notes accompanying the hundreds of tapes discovered in his barn.

Bertoia's recordings are as much a celebration of sustained tones, intervallic relationships, healing vibrations, deep listening and shimmering harmonics as Indian Classical music, singing bowls, The Well Tuned Piano or Benjamin Franklin's glass armonica. Through these rich harmonics and pulsing pure tone, Bertoia was able to more clearly articulate his inner spirit than he could with sculpture alone – a point he made himself many times in interviews.

Harry Bertoia first came into artistic prominence in the late 1930s and his sculptural, ergonomic chairs, produced by Knoll Furniture beginning in 1952, were soon modernist furniture classics. Inspired by the resonant sounds emanating from metals as he worked them and encouraged by his brother Oreste, whose passion was music, Harry restored a fieldstone "Pennsylvania Dutch" barn as the home for this experiment in sounding sculptures which he had begun in the 1950s. Bertoia was an obsessive composer and relentless experimenter, often working late into the night and accumulating hundreds of tapes of his best performances; Oreste, too, would explore and record the sculptures' sounds during his annual visits to his brother's home in rural Pennsylvania.

Learning by experimentation was common for Bertoia and he mastered the art of tape recording, turning the Sonambient barn into a sound studio with four overhead microphones hanging from the rafters in a square formation. He would experiment with overdubbing by performing along to previous recordings, sometimes backwards, constantly improving his methods while also honing his performance skills. Bertoia was a careful editor of his own work and only chosen recordings remained, each with a date and carefully considered observations written on a note included with each tape. Through these pieces of paper a greater logic can be uncovered, a careful approach to composition, ideas, feelings and forms. The story of Sonambient barn collection will slowly be told through the release of recordings from the archive as well as installations and performances built from Bertoia's own recordings, lectures and a book.

Okokon returns to Other People with his sophomore album, 'Offering', delving deeper into the lush and cinematic soundscapes he first explored on his debut album, 'Turkson Side'. While primarily working in visual arts, Africanus Okokon, who records under his surname, bridges his artistic practices in 'Offering', using his masterful collage techniques to create his most personal work yet. Defying easy
categorization, the album melds influences from dream pop, avant-garde folk, psychedelia, trip hop, and dub, with traces of field recordings seamlessly blended throughout to form a cohesive whole.
'Offering' sees Okokon confronting and negotiating a sudden and unexplained death that occurred in his childhood and the complex emotions left in its aftermath, acting as his main inspiration when
making the album. This ambiguity is something that permeates throughout, with Okokon wanting to explore the ambivalence and sometimes uneasiness of contradicting emotions appearing
simultaneously, alluded to in the album title. This is also reflected in how the album tracks each inhabit different narrators with varying perspectives on the same events. The result being a hauntingly
beautiful album, with recurring themes of death, growth, sacrifice and spirituality ever present.

This re-issue faithfully replicates the original 1970 Island Records UK release in gatefold sleeve and is pressed onto high quality 180g vinyl. After their 1969 album Liege and Leif paved the way, Fairport Convention pushed further into traditional music, led by charismatic and renown fiddle-player Dave Swarbrick, who had joined the group in 1969 after making his name with Martin Carthy earlier in the decade. Vocalist Sandy Denny and bassist Ashley Hutchings left after Liege and Leif, and for the first time since the group's inception in 1967, there would be no female voice on a Fairport album.Guitarists Richard Thompson and Simon Nicol took vocal leads with Swarbrick and, with new bassist Dave Pegg joining drummer Dave Mattacks, the group made Full House, released in July 1970. Picking up where its predecessor left off, and again recorded with Joe Boyd at London's Sound Techniques, the album continued the standards set by their previous four albums. Four of the seven songs on Full House were adapted from traditional folk melodies, such as Dirty Linen and Sir Patrick Spens, while of the originals, Thompson and Swarbrick's nine-minute opus Sloth gave the group one of their all-time anthems. The sleeve sent up their new role as ambassadors of the rustic by inventing a string of traditional British games that didn't really exist.

Ava Mendoza has never made an album quite as personal as her second solo full-length, The Circular Train. Through her decades of collaborations with Nels Cline, Carla Bozulich, William Parker, Fred Frith, Matana Roberts, and Mick Barr—plus years leading her power trio Unnatural Ways and playing in Bill Orcutt’s quartet—the guitarist’s name has become synonymous with virtuoso technique, raw passion, and visceral resonance, a player pushing the edges of the guitar’s possibilities. Along the way, from 2007 to 2023, Mendoza was writing these slow-burning, incandescent songs. The Circular Train is comprised solely of her single-tracked guitar playing and, on two songs, her corporeal singing. Her first solo LP of original material since relocating from California to New York City a decade ago, much of The Circular Train was honed amid pandemic years that clarified the virtues of slowing down. This expressive avant-rock is a definitive introduction to one of the most uncompromising and inquisitive visions in creative music. Mendoza’s thrilling melange of free jazz, blues, noise, classical training, and blazing experimental rock’n’roll all coheres with ecstatic feedback, with picking and solos that crest with shimmer. Sometimes she sounds like a one-woman Sonic Youth with guttural and poised vocals that equally evoke Patti Smith and blues greats like Jessie Mae Hemphill. Conceptually, The Circular Train is presented as a psychogeographical train ride through certain of Mendoza’s musical homelands. The songs draw on ancestral and recent familial memories, notably of her parents’ roots in mining towns—in her father’s home country of Bolivia and mother’s hometown of Butte, Montana, each country with its own history of colonialism, racism, forced labor, the eradication of culture and the subsequent excavation of it. These adventurous songs were composed in cars and planes, in the heart of the Mississippi Delta, in Los Angeles and upstate New York—which is to say in motion. “Ride to Cerro Rico,” named for the mountain and silver mine at the center of Potosi, Bolivia, was inspired by Mendoza’s great grandmother’s life there in a Quechua mining family. “Dust From the Mines” drew from that history as well as Mendoza’s familial lineage of miners in Montana, building up to stunning swaths of shredded iridescence. “Pink River Dolphins” was inspired by a visit to the Amazon rainforest, swimming with dolphins alongside her father—the pink bufeos that inhabit both Bolivia and Columbia—and the song is dedicated to the memory of Mendoza’s late friend, the Colombian-American trumpeter jaimie branch. They shared a fascination with those intelligent and agile creatures who often communicate by echolocation. “Make a sound, it comes back around,” Mendoza sings, and later, “Echo, echo/The answer in a sound,” evoking what branch knew well: through music we navigate life. The Circular Train contains one cover, “Irene, Goodnight,” composed by Gussie Lord Davis and popularized by Leadbelly; Mendoza has been performing it for over 20 years. Almost as deeply embedded in her repertoire is the penultimate track, “The Shadow Song.” “Treat your shadow kind and it might treat you good,” Mendoza sings on this song that she’s been reworking for over a decade, an emblem of devotion. “Treat your shadow kind and it might treat you right,” she repeats, becoming a blues mantra. What is a shadow self if not one’s secret world, which, once laid bare, awaits an echo, a return?

You Never End is the third album from Valentina Magaletti, Tom Halstead and Joe Andrews (Moin) out via AD 93 on the 25th October. Its title alone expresses the teetering and shifting nature of both the album and band. This record marks the Moin’s shift into a new phase with vocal collaborations across the album from Olan Monk, james K, Coby Sey and Sophia Al-Maria.

The album’s collaborators all have voices that are alluring in their own right whilst hard to pin down: from james K’s ethereal, reverb drenched vocals, Coby Sey’s words that bounce and echo across London’s concrete streets and Olan Monk’s emotive songwriting, while artist Sophie Al-Maria’s voice and thoughts are known to stretch across her multidisciplinary practice as an artist, filmmaker and writer. The unique mystique of each collaborator is maintained throughout the record while simultaneously opening Moin up to new possibilities, in a gentle shifting alchemy.

Continuing their enigmatic re-configuring of the traditional band, Moin use a mix of conventional and unique production and compositional techniques. Subtly re-framing the current conversation about what band in 2024 needs to be, Moin walk the line between what's reassuringly familiar and what's unsettling and inquisitive. You Never End is a more sensitive record in sentiment, it re-contextualises grunge, shoegaze and indie rock with a weirdly comforting melancholy while still sounding direct and alive.

Showing Moin at their most accessible, the vocal collaborations bring the most articulate moments and lucid emotion while still remaining uniquely within Moin's established world. Alongside this, the record fine tunes the elements of electronic production that have always been a feature of the band's unique sound in a deeply subtle way. Elements are simpler and more direct, offering robust functional support as well as textural and emotional resonance. Together they show the potential for both practices to intertwine.

You Never End is both produced and mixed by Tom and Joe, demonstrating the extended range of control the pair have over the band's sound, and their ability to truly hold together Moin’s intricate world.

Known for the monolithic force of their music and their inventive production techniques, The Body"s albums are benchmarks in the expansion and evolution of heavy music. Tightly packed with deceptively nuanced arrangements and exhilarating, challenging distortion, their compositions are possessed of an unmistakably singular sound. The Crying Out of Things is no exception; a culmination of all that The Body have done before, highlighting their mastery of dynamic and monumental music that pushes toward the unmistakable sound of oblivion The Body have produced a wealth of groundbreaking collaborations with the likes of Full of Hell, Thou, Uniform, BIG|BRAVE, OAA, and Dis Fig. The duo"s benchmark albums have, over the past 2 decades, changed the perceptions and directions of heavy music. The Crying Out of Things" embrace of noise is a comprehensive display of the multitude of expressions possible with abrasive sound, a skill that The Body have pioneered and refined. "I think for us the key to the way we use noise is, it"s not the only element," says Buford. "You"ve gotta really listen if you"re into noise. But it also has to have dynamics. Where, say, BIG|BRAVE (who have a similar ethos) expresses it in this more intellectual, minimalist way, The Body comes from an instinctual, maximalist way. We"re trying to cover it ALL." The Body stand alone in their ability to connect disparate influences and collaborators into a wholly original, potent and singular work. Alongside producer/engineer Seth Manchester, the duo"s voracious and omnivorous musical appetites have pushed the studio as an instrument into new avenues to conjure profound feelings from the music. The Crying Out of Things cements The Body"s place as a leader of heavy new music, their boundless creativity, their defining ability to convey anguish, created with a visceral clarity to devastating impact.

Known for the monolithic force of their music and their inventive production techniques, The Body"s albums are benchmarks in the expansion and evolution of heavy music. Tightly packed with deceptively nuanced arrangements and exhilarating, challenging distortion, their compositions are possessed of an unmistakably singular sound. The Crying Out of Things is no exception; a culmination of all that The Body have done before, highlighting their mastery of dynamic and monumental music that pushes toward the unmistakable sound of oblivion The Body have produced a wealth of groundbreaking collaborations with the likes of Full of Hell, Thou, Uniform, BIG|BRAVE, OAA, and Dis Fig. The duo"s benchmark albums have, over the past 2 decades, changed the perceptions and directions of heavy music. The Crying Out of Things" embrace of noise is a comprehensive display of the multitude of expressions possible with abrasive sound, a skill that The Body have pioneered and refined. "I think for us the key to the way we use noise is, it"s not the only element," says Buford. "You"ve gotta really listen if you"re into noise. But it also has to have dynamics. Where, say, BIG|BRAVE (who have a similar ethos) expresses it in this more intellectual, minimalist way, The Body comes from an instinctual, maximalist way. We"re trying to cover it ALL." The Body stand alone in their ability to connect disparate influences and collaborators into a wholly original, potent and singular work. Alongside producer/engineer Seth Manchester, the duo"s voracious and omnivorous musical appetites have pushed the studio as an instrument into new avenues to conjure profound feelings from the music. The Crying Out of Things cements The Body"s place as a leader of heavy new music, their boundless creativity, their defining ability to convey anguish, created with a visceral clarity to devastating impact.

Joel Sarakula's new album "Soft Focus" is a mid-career album spanning his many influences and genres including Soft-Rock, Funk and Indie Pop, all brought under the umbrella of his gentle gaze and a 'soft' aesthetic. "Soft Focus" is also the name of a photographic technique born out of a spherical abberation of the lens where the image is a bit blurry and undefined: it's both flattering and forgiving on the subject. It's an apt title. As a lifetime wearer of (vintage) glasses, Sarakula knows a lot about spherical abberations. Perhaps he produced these songs with his glasses off as these are abstract and warm vignettes, never overstaying their welcome and for this reason Sarakula manages to feature twelve new tracks on "Soft Focus".

Highlights include one of the two Shawn Lee produced tracks "I'll Get By Without You", the rockier, iberic beat of "King Of Spain", the soulful affirmation of "Back For Your Love" and the psychedelic-tinged "Bird Of Paradise" and "Microdosing". This is a lovingly crafted album, well polished and it feels like the culmination of Sarakula's adventures in soulful soft-rock and his defining statement in the genre. While comparisons will be made with contemporary projects like Shawn Lee's Young Gun Silver Fox, Drugdealer, Benny Sings and Prep, echoes of soft-rock icons Ned Doheny, Boz Scaggs, Todd Rundgren and Michael Franks also ripple gently through the album.

Imagine if Ray Manzarek was the frontman for the Bee Gees... It's a neat visual introduction to Joel Sarakula, a UK-based Australian artist who writes, produces and sings Soulful Pop, gazing out at a contemporary world through vintage glasses, vintage threads and long blond hair. His music is informed by a rich, 1970s-inspired palette, drawing on soft-rock, funk and disco influences: sunny, uptempo jams for darker times. Self-aware that he looks and occasionally sounds like the love child of Ray Manzarek and the Gibb brothers, his self-deprecating sense of humour is always there just below the fringe.

Born in Sydney, based in UK and international in outlook Sarakula is a songwriter who has travelled the world in search of his muse, experiencing everything from being a victim of Caribbean carjackings to performing in the remote fishing villages of Norway before finally establishing his career in the UK and Europe. Since then he has released albums such as "Island Time" (2023), "Companionship" (2020), "Love Club" (2018) and "The Imposter" (2015) that have racked up plays on rotation across national UK and European radio and got him noticed in The New York Times, The Independent (UK), The Irish Times, Rolling Stone Germany, El Pais (Spain) and Sydney Morning Herald. It's- been a long road finding his current cult status starting out at the piano from a young age in suburban Sydney, writing and singing songs by the time he was a teenager and onstage by fifteen years old playing jazz standards in his local golf club. "I came from humble beginnings, it's best not to mention" as he sings in his 70s boogie influenced song "I'm Still Winning". Joel Sarakula is a fixture on the festival and club circuit having previously performed at SXSW, Primavera Sound and Glastonbury festivals. Ever the internationalist, he tours with pickup bands sourced from each territory he plays in: a Barcelona band for Spain, a Berlin band for Germany and so forth. This cross-cultural exchange is another echo of the 1970s when world travelling soul and pop artists from the US did the same and guarantees that his live shows remain fresh, exciting and absolutely contemporary.

Throughout the 1960s, Canadian composer Bruce Haack was as ubiquitous on children’s and variety shows as were exotic animals from the San Diego Zoo. But he wasn’t there to perform so much as demonstrate. In his formative compositions for theatre and ballet, he had experimented with tape loops and musique concrète techniques; by the early ’60s, he wasn’t just playing around with electronic sounds, but also making the very gizmos that generated them. By day, Haack would eke out a living as a composer for commercials and a series of instructive, interactive children’s records made with collaborator Esther Nelson.

But by night, Haack was making music that was decidedly adults-only.

Originally released in 1970, The Electric Lucifer was Haack’s first work pitched to a contemporary rock audience, released by Columbia Records in the dying days of a post-hippie moment when bizarro outsider-psych could still find a home on a major label. If it was not the first rock record to feature electronics, it was certainly among the first to give them a starring role—both musically and conceptually.

arottenbit is an electronic music project born in 2008 by Alessandro 'Otto' Galli (FOH Sound Engineer for Messa, Deafheaven, Pallbearer, Truckfighters, Bongzilla, Fuoco Fatuo). Playing solo with a 1989 NINTENDO GAME BOY or accompanied by hardcore punk drummer Guido Montanarini (PARADISE LOST, IMPLORE, THE SECRET), he soon found himself opening for some of his favorite bands like MELVINS, ATARI TEENAGE RIOT, THE BODY, MELT BANANA, AUTHOR & PUNISHER, FULL OF HELL and performing at major international festivals like ROADBURN 2022, HELLFEST 2022. "You Don't Know What Chiptune Is" is a bold exploration of the chiptune genre, pushing the boundaries of 8-bit music with an experimental and innovative approach. Each track on the album is a unique specimen, meticulously crafted to showcase the versatility and depth of chiptune sounds. The album is characterized by its inventive use of 8-bit sound chips, evoking the essence of vintage gaming consoles like Game Boy. arottenbit skillfully manipulates these sounds to create a wide range of textures and atmospheres. The lo-fi, raw quality of the 8-bit era is preserved, while contemporary production techniques enhance the overall listening experience.

Amandra, half head honcho behind Ahrpe Records, goes for subtly evolving and droning atmospheres. With releases spanning electronic genres and record labels: Nous klaer Audio, AD 93, Tikita or Semantica, just to name a few; the French producer ba with coherence his own vision of acid and tribal rhythms that can be presented with either bright and soft feelings or through a
Brera Som Som EP

As always with Amandra, there is a blend of poetic and soft hidden touch given to the music through carefully crafted personal Som is a 4 tracker EP, recorded back when he lived in Warsaw Poland, showcasing the artists ability to navigate through nich double 12 package cherry topped with four intelligent and eclectic remixes from artists with their own unique identity: Shieldin Brainwaltzera.

Amandra on disc 1
Brera Som Som
I want my music to breathe dirty so its alive to my ears, trying to stay away from surgical, clean, electronic music. The Prophet recorded by hand, with assumed offbeat imperfections, as always. I wanted to get a naive Asian mood out of it, just to try and c track. I tend to think a lot about my tracks and their meaning more in terms of feelings, art and techniques than in terms of dee
dance floors or whatever. Brera Som Som is a try at using the chiaroscuro technique depicted in classical paintings for instance interesting focus on some very specific elements.

Cyborg Pelikana
Recorded out of a jam on a Soma Pulsar 23 and some heavy distorted synths, it ended up sounding like no other recordings bit different as I wanted to have a more composed like approach here.

Fanfaron
Here is a try at going jungle... with a Moog DFAM and a 303 processed through a Sherman Filterbank.

Prorokini
This one belongs to a phase where I was exploring the sampling side of electronic music. Until that moment I was building 100 based on raw drum machines and some processing, then started feeling how it would feel to sample some raw external beats and process them my way. I didnt pursue that sampling lead much afterward because it felt like a boring approach to me that
stood out anyway, like this one, which Im very proud of. The synths are clearly programmed on the Prophet 08, it cant go any Instruments than that, if you like them, go grab that synth

Remixers on disc 2
Cyborg Pelikana Shielding Remix
I liked the dry and direct qualities of the original track and wanted to maintain that feeling while collaging it using my own proc Recorded in my old home studio in Stockholm.

Brera Som Som Brainwaltzera Remix
no comment.
Fanfaron Whylie Remix
The remix was made using resampling techniques, the rhythmic noises were transformed into driving percussive layers pushi character. A more emotional overlay was added to the track based on the sentimental and personal approach I built through.

Brera Som Som Martinou Remix
Interpreting Amandras work has been on my bucket list for a while. Theres something in it that is innately humanizing and raw capture in my remix. The melody line from the remix is just a snapshot of a small part of the full original track, but it stuck with my improvisation to what you see before you today. With this remix I wanted to make something that would swell slowly and ring o
All original tracks written and produced by Amandra.
Remixes written and produced by Brainwaltzera, Whylie, Martinou and Shielding.
Mastered by Amandra.
Artwork by Neurotypique.

Psych-rock band Longheads are set to release their debut album, Layers of Wax, after recently signing with Stolen Body Records. This seven-track album delves deep into the realms of stoner and doom, all while retaining the signature psychedelic sound that fans have come to love from their first two EPs. Following the success of their acclaimed second EP, Mars Doesn’t Feel Like Home Anymore, Layers of Wax marks a significant evolution in the band's sound. Listeners can expect a more polished and mature sound that still captures the energy that propelled their previous EP to prominence within the London psych scene. The first single from the album, "Deathcap Farmer Part Two," will be released alongside a psychedelic, space-faring music video. This track showcases the band's continued experimentation with a 9/4 time signature, a technique they began exploring on the title track of their previous EP, Mars Doesn’t Feel Like Home Anymore.

"No Input" is the debut eponymous EP by the electronic duo composed by the Palestinian modular synthesis artist Karim Atari, and the Italian electronic music producer and co-founder of Abu Recordings, boyjayne.

The 20-minute EP features an eclectic mix of acid, electro and downtempo dub techno inspired by the likes of Drexciya, Filmmaker, and E.R.P. With this EP, No Input sought out to make distinctive high-energy tracks for the dance floor. Their approach combines modular synthesis and sample manipulation techniques, creating a sound that is at once reminiscent of classic techno and electro and unpredictable in its novel reinterpretation.